


The Facts

by RedShiloh



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Science Boyfriends, suicide references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 21:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedShiloh/pseuds/RedShiloh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>These are the facts he knows...</i>
</p>
<p>Tony and Bruce capture the moments between Bruce and the Hulk. Bruce contemplates the moments between his old life and the new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Facts

These are the facts Bruce knows:

  1. He transforms when his pulse rate reaches over 200bpm.
  2. His bones break and mend a total of twenty two times with each transformation.
  3. He is wired not to remember the pain.



Tony decides to record it one day, the transformation. He builds a room strong enough to contain the Hulk and they monitor everything, the heart rate, the life signs, x-ray, sound waves, the works.

Bruce stands idly inside the room. It is effectively a box. The walls are made of adamantium lined with lead lined with titanium. Even if the Hulk could break out it would’ve taken months. Tony is somewhere on the other side. He can see Bruce over the monitor but Bruce can’t see Tony, he can only hear his detached voice drifting into the room like the voice of Big Brother.

“All set this end. Whenever you’re ready.”

Bruce nods once. He kneels down on the ground and retrieves a polished revolver from his inside pocket. There is one bullet loaded in the chamber and the weight is a cold familiar presence in his grasp. He strokes his fingers over the metal,  _hello old friend_ , he thinks.

This part of the plan was Bruce’s idea. Tony balks at first. He says there is no way he is ever going to stand back and watch Bruce try to kill himself again.  _But it’s fine_ , Bruce reassures him,  _he can’t die, he never dies_. There’s no other way they can bring the Hulk out in such a contained environment, not easily. It’s all in the name of science.

And all for the name of science, Tony reluctantly agrees.

Bruce holds the gun as carelessly as he can because he knows if Tony suspects for a second the thoughts and feelings that are invoked within, he would stop their experiment then and there.

He makes eye contact with the camera as his pulse monitor thrums at 110bpm, elevated but steady. He tells Tony,  _you might not want to see this_ , and then he holds the barrel to his head. He presses it to the side, to the twitching pulse behind his ear. Last time he held it to his mouth, tasted the salty metal on his lips and shot up. But that seems too personal this time, too intimate for the name of science.

“I could spin the chamber,” he says suddenly. “A game of Russian roulette if you like.”

Silence over the intercom, Tony is not amused.

The corner of Bruce’s lips curls in a secret smile, he counts one, two, and then without hesitation, he pulls the trigger.

The moments after are a blur, as they always are. He remembers abstract pain, skin and muscle and bone splitting and ripping and growing big, bigger, too big. He remembers fury, absolute mind blowing rage, but it’s disconnected, he is a passenger watching another in his body. He remembers a power that’s almost intoxicating because nothing can stop him and everything is perishable.

Time is irrelevant during the transformation. It passes in an instant but also feels endless. He never knows how much time he’s been gone, hours, days, weeks. Sometimes he wonders if one day he just won’t turn back, if one day he’ll cease to exist and all that will be left is the Hulk. He wonders if he will be aware of this, or if he will just fade away, like dying.

He comes back to himself with his cheek pressed against the cold hard ground and a throbbing behind his eyes. A dull taste of copper lingers on his tongue and the whisper of forgotten aches send a fever through his limbs.

He struggles to sit up and blinks his eyes open but the world is too bright to face just yet.

Tony’s above him, he briefly catches his face, eyes strained with fear and worry.

“Bruce,” he’s saying. “Talk to me, Bruce. Can you hear me?”

Bruce nods and vertigo spins through his mind, the world rocking like a ship in a storm. His fingers curl against the cold floor like it will ground him, broken fingernails scraping over metal. “I’m ok,” he manages; mouth thick with saliva and bile which he swallows. “I’m ok… did you get it?”

Tony’s arms are around him, they hook under his armpits and pull him up, Bruce leans back, the warmth of Tony enveloping him, it’s nice, it’s grounding. Tony breathes hot gasps of air against his scalp and he says softly and privately and desperately “Never again, we’re never doing that again, you son of a bitch.”

 

* * *

 

By all accounts, Bruce should be dead. The readings are pretty definitive about that; the internal damage, the trauma, the shock, everything Bruce goes through in those moments of the transformation leaves him a hair’s breadth from death and it’s only through the Hulk that he survives. Watching the readings, Tony believed at first that something must have gone wrong, that this time Bruce was actually going to die.

But he didn’t, and he hasn’t. It’s all part of the cycle, death to survival to life; repeat.

Tony shows him the results later, after Bruce has crashed for half the day in exhausted sleep. They sit at Tony’s desk; Bruce curled in on himself under a thick sweater with a mug of steaming green tea in his hands. He feels cold and hungry for days after any transformation. It’s an endless hunger and a coldness that seeps deep within him and chills his bones. Tony points out the moment when everything peaks, he loops the footage over and over and he freezes it at the crucial spot just as Bruce is gone and the Hulk remains, the exact moment when Bruce effectively dies.

“This happens every time you change,” Tony says; voice hushed with awe. Bruce inspects the screen. He’s never seen the transformation from this perspective before, not properly. The most he’s ever witnessed was the shaking footage caught by tourists on their phones. On Tony’s HD screens, his face is twisted worse than a Lovecraft creature, his features tinged green and agony etched on every line, mouth frozen in a silent scream. Bruce looks at himself and he feels cold. He reaches into his pocket and rubs his thumb over the bullet hidden there, he’d found it on the floor of the box when he’d awakened and he’d palmed it before Tony could see. It’s warped from impact; there are traces of dried blood crusted over the metal, his blood.

“That’s only once,” he says. His palm closes around the bullet, hiding it. “We need to do it again, to eradicate anomalies.”

* * *

 

Bruce can’t sleep in Stark Towers. It’s just too quiet. With the thick walls and windows blocking out the street below all he can hear is the empty hum of the air con and he feels like he’s living in a vacuum.

Tony isn’t one for home comforts and everything is efficient to the point of robotic. He misses the colours and the smells of India where life just seems to seep into your senses, into your pores, until it becomes a part of you. The cold lights and polished metal of Stark Tower brings back memories of hospitals and labs that Bruce would rather forget and he sees the ghost of General Ross around every corner.

He keeps the windows open in his room. He’s somewhere between fifty and eighty floors up and he’s fairly certain health and safety should keep them from opening more than a few inches but with just a few adjustments, he has them flung wide and open to the world.

Most nights he’ll sit there with his toes curling into nothing and just a flimsy railing between him and the street below. The height doesn’t bother him, the Hulk would appear before he hit the ground, he knows that from experience. Bruce sits there with his back against the wall and his eyes closed and the wind blowing errant strands of hair, tickling the nape of his neck.

He listens to the traffic below, the car horns and the revving engines and he imagines he’s back in Calcutta. Back in the winding streets of the shanty towns with box bicycles and tinny jeeps kicking up red dust clouds. Where there’s always smells; spices, and cooking meat, and burning sugar. Fruit ripening and softening in the hot sun. Warm sweating bodies, and coconut sunblock worn by the tourists.

He remembers walking back to his rented room with the taste of mango on his lips, back home where his army cot and single sink comprises his makeshift surgery practice. It wasn’t much, but he was respected by the locals and they would come to him with their illnesses. He wasn’t an expert in medicine, but he was learning, he’d been studying for as long as he’d been on the run and he’d been on the run for as long as he could remember. He’d gotten good at it, though suturing was still a little tricky to him. There were hospitals in Calcutta of course; good ones. Bruce was there for the people who couldn’t go for whatever reason, whether they couldn’t afford it or wanted to keep low on the radar, he didn’t ask questions, he was just there to help.

And that’s the problem, he thinks. He doesn’t have a purpose here, not now that the threat is over. He’s just existing and the stasis is turning to stagnation and as each day passes he can stand it less. Wanderlust has turned to yearning and as Bruce looks out over the cityscape with his toes chilled in the breeze and his knuckles white where they grip the railing, he wishes he could disconnect, he wishes he could be anywhere but here.

The only reason he stays is because of a spoken promise he made when they were still charged from the heat of the battle. When his body vibrated equally from adrenaline and exhaustion, Tony came to him. He draped a blanket over his naked shoulders and he looked at him hard.

“Stay,” Tony asked. And Bruce said yes. He can’t remember why, but he agreed, and he’s coming to regret it now. He thinks maybe it’s a promise he will have to break.

 


End file.
